Goyavoyage's den

Things I liked in October 2024

This is an attempt at something new for me: a pell-mell post of things I liked during the past month. I'm not sure this will stick and lead to something monthly - it may put my brain too much into review mode for everything I do, which is not a satisfying sensation, or bum me out during months I did not find many things, or simply require too much energy - but I'm curious to try, at least.
I was inspired by several newsletters I get, blogs I follow (with a specific mention to Zeno's consistent and efficient format, of which I am rather admirative), and cohost posts I used to see on my feed. With those, I realized that glancing over small descriptions of fictions and essays and stuff people liked recently is a good way for at least some of them to pique my interest. When skimming through them, I may catch a title or two that I will end up digging into at some point, and that's nice.
And so I thought I'd do the same here.

I have a tendency toward long writing to put things into perspective: to dig into their themes, their potential CWs, the emotions they elicited in me, detail criticism, etc. I won't be doing this here, so what I write will of course be far less precise. As such, take all that is below with a grain of salt: it gathers things I simply liked and things I adored in equal measure without much room for nuance or nitpicking, when squeezed into a few sentences.
This is also an exercise in brevity (*glances at everything she wrote* well... to some extent). It will obviously frustrate me a little, but I cannot decently write longer posts on everything I enjoy, so this is a form of short recommendation of sorts, I suppose. It is an occasion to mention fictions I probably wouldn't feature on regular posts, while making me eager to write longer, more precise things about the ones that would. I will try not to write too much directly here, to keep most of the detailed reviews to dedicated posts.

As a last note, I will try to keep this kind of content to things I liked, unless specified otherwise: I feel like mentioning things you like in passing is a worthier excercise than things you dislike in passing.

Anyway; let's get to this.

Games

A Normal Lost Phone: I replayed this short game with a partner, and it was a joy to discover it again, five years or something after first playing it by myself. Its "unlock someone's phone by looking through their data and try to understand why they left it behind" puzzles are as satisfying as I remember them. Below this trapping, the game broaches LGBT topics in ways that feel obviously a bit more basic and explanatory to me now that they did back then, but it has a very realistic writing and design that makes it a clear stand-out and an easy recommendation.

Neva: Gris, the previous game by Nomada studio, has been among my favorite games for years for its superb aesthetic, its touching metaphor of grief, and its music - it's still my go-to example to show people that videogames are very clearly an artistic medium. Even though I'm still halfway through, Neva, released mid-October and featuring a gorgeous forest with a woman warrior and a white wolf fighting against its corruption, is unsurprisingly slowly growing its own special place in my heart.

Hades II: In spite of my unending love for Hades, its studio Supergiant Games, and their games in general, when I started Hades II, I didn't know whether the core of it - which screamed "more of Hades, but with new characters, weapons and storylines" - would be enough to draw me in. After so much time spent on Hades, did I need more of it? Well, the answer is a big yes. This doesn't feel repetitive - on the contrary, it feels addictive as always, and seeing its early access updates as they go (the first big one dropped this month, hence why I picked the game up again after starting this summer) is always nudging me toward another run. Everything is just stellar as always.

Books

Right Ho, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse: I tried various Substacks that would provide you literary classics bit by bit, but none in which I got as invested as Dracula Daily, the one that started it all with its big tumblr popularity in 2022. A close one still convinced me to try the one on Jeeves and Wooster by P.G. Wodehouse as it started living rent-free in their head. I have only a superficial knowledge of the short stories of which I missed the broadcast, but here I am following some of it in novel form. And I must admit it's very funny, with a specific slightly old writing style that hits the mark a lot.

Comics

Various ShortBox comics: October has been the season for the ShortBox comics fair for a few years now, and it's been a joy each time to browse it, do some shopping, and read lots of comics while supporting and discovering artists through it. I bought a second batch of them at the end of the month that I have yet to read, but my favorite so far is probably Allodynia by VioletKitchen, a difficult but striking read about a person aiming to understand better their partner's chronic pain, and their very unhealthy dynamic about it. It really is something, both in the art and the story. I had discovered them with Return to Sender, their hits-close-to-home submission to the 2023 fair, and I'm curious to read her other comics someday.
Anyway. I know it is a bit late to advertise this whole fair as it just closed its doors until October 2025, but this may put it on your radar for next year!

Happy Endings by Lucie Bryon: I think this one has been released in French only so far. This is a collection of three short comics; of which I had, funnily enough, read one of them - Ocean - when it first released... during the ShortBox comic fair of 2023! That story of two time travelers stuck in the 2000s in a coastal French village had been my fair highlight of that year, and it's been wonderful to read it again here, alongside two other stories: it's still the one that steals the show among the three of this collection. I already knew the comic artist for the really funny Voleuse (released in English as Thieves), and it's becoming clear to me that I really like her art style and stories.

Mangas

(note: for titles that have yet to be published in English and do not have a name that is already made of English words, I put both the fan-translated title and the Japanese transliteration of the original title when I could find them. I also added links to read their fan-translations in English, for lack of official translation.)

Yuri corner

Yuri is My Job! by Miman, vol. 1-7: Finally started and devoured the first half of the currently published volumes in English (the French release, as often, is lagging behind) of this series I had heard lots of good things for a long while. I wasn't much into it at first, as I expected it to examine its somewhat contrived setting that parodies old yuri tropes based on S literature, and it does not. Nonetheless, it slowly evolves into a rather engrossing knot of interpersonal romantic relationships, set up as dominos carefully cascading into each other for maximum drama. I'll clearly write a detailed recommendation about it at some point.

Planet Laika by Mayuri Yoshida: Found this one by chance, I think by browsing the Girls' Love and Sci-fi tags on Mangadex. I did not expect a short story about a gay little dog making a deal with an eldritch entity and wanting to get revenge on humanity - but sometimes yuri works in mysterious ways. It was oddly good and bittersweet, with a nice slightly old-looking art style. I may write a proper review about it?

Various mangas by Shio Usui: As I'll be able to say again soon in a Februaryuri rerun, I really liked the author's Donuts Under a Crescent Moon and to some extent I Married My Female Friend, and am following with interest the currently serialized Our "Love" is Disgusting (Bokura no Ai wa Kimochi Warui) (NSFW), so I've been trying the rest of her yuri works this month. The collection of oneshots The World Exists for You (Kimi no Tame ni Sekai wa Aru) was rather consistently nice - though without a clear standout for me. Her other currently serialized story, Becoming Her Lover For the Sake of Love (Koi ni Koi suru Koibito Kankei), treads much more expected plot beats so far, but I'm still curious about how it'll grow.

Girlfriend Limited to 7 Days (7-Kakan Gentei Kanojo) by Suika Amazaki: Similar plot beats as the one by Usui above, about a prim-and-proper student fake-dating a more unserious one so that they try and understand love (if I had a nickel...). It's hard to judge this one with only two chapters translated so far, but it has at least some promising elements that evoke a more grounded lesbian awakening.

Various yuri oneshots: The one that stays with me the most this month is clearly When the Calm Ends (Nagi no Hate Nite) by Ageharuuu, with its unclear growingly ominous atmosphere and some hard-hitting last few pages. I also reread A Meaningless Sunday (NSFW) by Haru Akiyama, which may have been one of my first yuri OS, and which is simple yet still memorable with its monochrome pages and its dreamlike feeling.

Various other yuri I've been following the fan translation for a while and am still enjoying this month:

Touhou fan mangas (doujinshi)

Touhou doujinshi by Aya "azmaya" Azuma: I already dug into most of Azuma's stuff after finishing the canon Touhou manga Wild and Horned Hermit, that she was the artist of. I have reread a fraction of her other works during October, and I'm still amazed by how good most of them are. Here, special mentions go to The Canary is in the Mirror (Canaria wa Kagami no Naka) which may be one of my favorite Maribel x Renko stories - ominous just as I like it, and referencing their canon storyline in great ways - and the much more down-to-earth There's Been an Incident So Time for Some New Clothes that is a big pretext to draw absolutely wonderful clothes for a lot of Gensokyo denizens.

Touhou doujinshi by Makoto Hirasaka: After so much attachment to the canon series on the Three Fairies of Light, finally reading some of Hirasaka's non-canon works often felt like meeting an old friend again. Granted, I do not vibe with all of his stuff; but it struck me when seeing their faces in his style and their (even non-canon) hijinks again how much I had missed the Three Fairies, and how good it was to see them again. In particular, the Three Fairies series (with a story of their meeting, a crossover with Kokoro referencing a chapter of Forbidden Scrollery, and a crossover with Koishi referencing Cheating Detective Satori) really warmed my heart.

Various other Touhou doujinshi: I function by big bursts with Touhou doujinshi - I often read a lot in a short time, then none for a long time. I read a lot this month. I may feature more reads in a specific post. Here, I should mention at least two reads by Fuuzen Lamp that got me specifically invested in Shinmyoumaru; and several by Munakata, with a distinctive artstyle and some more or less Yuugi-centered oneshots.

Other

Magical Girl Dandelion by Kaeru Mizuho: I saw several people invested in this budding magical girl series as cohost was coming to a close. Incidentally, Viz started to license it online in English recently. It's always difficult to judge something with only a few chapters under its belt, but the setup of said first few chapters was great. I'm (cautiously) curious as to how it will go.

Series

Anime

Revolutionary Girl Utena (ep 27-31): Spurred on by a larger initiative I first saw on cohost, I have been following Utena, maybe the most profoundly influent yuri work there is, as if it was releasing, week after week... only 17 years after its actual release. This started in April and we are now nearing the end - and the discovery of this anime truly carried me throughout this year. This is such a fantastic and surrealist work of art.
This month, we got a succession of truly memorable and hard-hitting episodes: the end(?) of Juri's character arc, which has been my favorite so far; and then an increase in terrifying things (and explicit incestuous content warnings), rightly framed as such, that had been nearing for a long while. Utena is both extremely well done, and often unexplainable and obscure; and it is an undescribable joy to come back to it each week. It is wild to think only two months of this ride remain, and it's becoming hard to wait for the next Tuesday. I am bracing myself for what is coming.

Acro Trip: This ongoing anime of this fall season is overall an enjoyable, genre-savvy parody of magical girl tropes - with a villain very bad at his job and a magical girl not much better; and the protagonist a magical girl enthusiast, who may be a bit gay for the later, and may help the failing villain to see her favorite fight her best. Still, it sometimes particularly feels like an adaptation of a manga in its animation... and recent episodes have soured my enthusiasm quite a bit, by having both a scene somewhat ridiculing a man in a magical girl outfit (it's the second anime to do so this season, and I am tired of seeing this in 2024), and a deflection of its yuri undertones with a crush on the villain, the only grown-up man of the trio, which make me uncomfortable. So, yeah, it's somewhat on thin ice here. But it remained a nice try; and I may try out other animes this season, we'll see!

Other

She-ra (season 2): This is the fifth time I am rewatching this series, the fourth time with a close one. I have grown a bit more critical of it as I have grown, and with the rewatches, but it's still really funny and good, and it's great to show it to someone yet again - and it does keep a special place in my heart. Also some episodes still break me into pieces. The one bad thing may be seeing Nate Stevenson deadnamed in the credits of each episode.

Heartstopper (season 3): A fan of both the comics and the series for some time (though I have yet to read vol. 5, that this season also covered), I was eagerly awaiting this. If season 1 is always a joy to rewatch around Pride month, I had been a bit disappointed by season 2's bigger focus on teen drama and some unadressed jealousy or bad communication; but I knew this one was going to hit harder in its topics. And, yup. It really does hit home. I have a few quips, but it's been overall splendid to see such realistic LGBT and mental health rep. Truly, the one big disappointment of this season was the blatant absence of Olivia Colman as a support character.

Over the Garden Wall: I had been meaning to watch this one for years - I didn't know it was this short, a total of maybe 100 minutes! It feels like a wonderful slightly scary old cartoon fairy tale, highly quotable and with lots of silly little songs that got stuck in my head; and watching it as a group around Halloween was nothing short of perfect.

Movies

The Outrun: Saw this one in movie theaters with a partner, without a single previous hint of its themes - alcoholism, and family difficulties, mainly. It was really good, well played, beautiful, and with a rather clever construction, without ever becoming something that feels like a lesson or some clean story about recovery or something. Also it really makes you want to never drink alcohol ever again.

Secrets of the Surface: A really good documentary on the life of brilliant Iranian mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani I had the opportunity of seeing a screening of. I knew it when starting the movie, but having such insight on her life made me even more bummed out to know she died in 2017.

Wolfwalkers: I somehow managed to watch this animated movie three times this year - the first one my first watch, then each time with different people. It is part of Tomm Moore's "Irish Folklore Trilogy" with The Secret of Kells, which I saw once long ago and am curious to rewatch; and The Song of the Sea, that I have yet to see. If I am angry at its final few moments, Wolfwalkers is overall an enchanting tale of wolves, magic, fighting against a rigid society, and a tiny bit of sapphic vibes.

The Boy and the Heron: This one just turned one year old already! Miyazaki's latest "last movie", I saw it last year in theaters and... well, it is less striking a rewatch not on the big screen. I remember reeling from it all during my first watch; this happens less when knowing its structure better, and notably how it almost feels like two movies turned into one. It is still a good watch overall - psychedelic at times, but grave and funny in turns, and far less incomprehensible that some may say. Also, somehow this rewatch was slightly less overflowing with parakeets than it was in my memories? They still scare me though. Freaking parakeets.

Around the Internet

Because at this point this kind of community round-up can also go here. I probably won't be able to fill this section often, but, yeah.

A bunch of posts on the end of cohost: some of them are deep and deeper analyses on the use of social media and the flaws that cohost had. Some of them are really poetic and inspiring and beautiful. It was nice reading them to process the end of a corner of the Internet at the turn of the month.

COVID Denialism and Disability Justice by Natalie: This is a really well articulated exploration on how part of the global tendency of downplaying covid now is possibly rooted in the general refusal of the social model of disability, and the perception of abled and disabled as rigid and distinct categories. And I mean-- yeah. I only know disabled folks that still wear face masks most of the time outside, and I have been struck to see even the queer community around me ignore that. That sucks.

A mon Ami (in French) by a member of the anticolonialist Jewish collective Tsedek: This long, detailed argumentation of the writer condemning Israel and trying to explain that to an old friend of his is a tough read that illustrates the chasm of communicating about it with people who cannot and will not listen.

Asexuality, Gross Phenomenological Assumptive Conundrums, and Me by Shel Raphen: This is an excellent attempt at giving a definition of asexuality that is not based on being the negative of a norm or vague criteria of sexual attraction, and an analysis about what its sub-labels often attempt to convey socially, with a parallel to what has similarly been done with the notion of transidentity. I found it extremely well-written and helpful.

Iseri Nina From Girls Band Cry Is The Utopian Japanese Media Needs by Mimidoshima: This wonderful character analysis of Nina, the main character of the anime Girls Band Cry, just made me want to rewatch it all over again. I love this show so much, and this post expresses very well both things I also feel slightly critical of, and the sheer strength of the hope the series carries that still sweeps me off my feets as it is.

Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names by Patrick McKenzie: I had read this one a few months before already I think (and it's wild to think it's from 2010), but it's still something I reread this month while trying to fight tooth and nail to get my name updated on platforms with unchangeable login. It probably won't be enough to convince anyone to make big changes about their name policies, but there is always hope.

Music

As a last, less organized category, a few mentions of music. This month's soundtrack was, among others:

Closing thoughts: Welp, this was way too long. I should've expected it, I suppose. October was a month particularly full of good stuff, though so maybe other attempts will be less... intense? Heh. I'm not sure. I'll see whether I keep this up.

Anyway. At the very least, this makes me want to post some occasional more specific posts of the form "5 yuri oneshots recommendations" or "5 Touhou doujinshi recommendations" that are more readable than this - shorter, more focused, while alloting some more sentences to each work. We'll see. I feel like I'm bursting with posts ideas and have way too little time to write all of them...
Until then, my hope is that you'll skim through this and find some titles that may strike your fancy.

Thank you for reading; I send you lots of strength for the rough month of November ahead.
Take care, as much as you can.

#things I liked in...